The Federal Government’s Regional Partnerships Program, which funded projects such as Buchanan Park, was scrapped in Tuesday night’s budget, leaving the Underground Hospital Committee without the grant necessary to proceed with plans to build a first-class medical museum and relocate and restore the Tent House, currently in Fourth Avenue.
“We received an email on Monday which said ‘we have approved your expression of interest and are keen to see the project develop’,” Underground Hospital publicity officer Margaret Medley said.
“24 hours later there was no funding available.”
Mrs Medley had hoped the federal funding would help cover $700,000 of the estimated $2 million project.
“We have plans drawn up for the lot; a new museum, a car park, fencing, moving and restoring the tent house to on-site here and creating something that Queenslanders could really celebrate.
“Our Underground Hospital is the only one of its kind built in the war years by civilians for civilians. We have so much medical equipment in storage that when we put it on display in the new museum - it would be first rate.”
Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government Minister Anthony Albanese said the cut funding program would be “built on and replaced” by a new initiative called Regional Development Australia (RDA) to be launched next year.
North Queensland Area Consultative Committee (NQACC), which facilitated the Regional Partnerships Program, said it could not confirm the future of funding for the Underground Hospital until it had a new brief to fulfil from the Federal Government.
“We can’t see any immediate funding available at our disposal,” executive officer Don Pollock said.
“Our expectation is that it (the Underground Hospital project) should or could fit in to the regional and local infrastructure program but there’s no guidelines for this available yet.
“We imagine that RDA will be the body that NQACC will become and we will still put this issue forward.”
Mrs Medley said the group would not give up on finding the necessary funding and was in preliminary talks with corporate sponsors.